Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America

by Sonja Trom Eayrs

Overview

In 2014 Sonja Trom Eayrs's parents filed the first of three lawsuits against Dodge County officials and their neighbors, one of the few avenues available to them to challenge installation of a corporate factory farm near their intergenerational family farm in Dodge County, Minnesota. For years they'd witnessed the now widely known devastation wrought by industrial hog operations--inhumane treatment of animals and people, pollution, the threat of cancer clusters, and more. They'd had enough. They also deeply understood an effect of Big Ag rarely discussed in mainstream media--the hollowing-out of their lifelong farming community and economy in service of the corporate bottom line.

In a compelling firsthand account of one family's efforts to stand against corporate takeover, Dodge County, Incorporated tells a story of corporate malfeasance. Starting with the late 1800s, when her Norwegian great-grandfather immigrated to Dodge County, Trom Eayrs tracks the changes to farming over the years that ultimately gave rise to the disembodied corporate control of today's food system. Trom Eayrs argues that far from being an essential or inextricable part of American life, corporatism can and should be fought and curbed, not only for the sake of land, labor, and water but for democracy itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496234995
Publisher:	UNP - Bison Books
Publication date:	11/01/2024
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Sonja Trom Eayrs is a farmer's daughter, rural advocate, and attorney. She is involved in several rural advocacy organizations, including the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, Farm Action, Land Stewardship Project, and Dodge County Concerned Citizens. Trom Eayrs also serves as the business manager for the Trom family farm in Dodge County, Minnesota. For more information about the author, visit sonjatromeayrs.com.

Editorial Reviews

2024-09-14
A fierce denunciation of corporate agriculture by a working farmer and attorney.

“Corporate agriculture has not only destroyed the rural spirit and harmony of living as one with the land but of living with one another as well.” So writes Trom Eayrs toward the end of her book, equal parts manifesto and memoir. A constant presence is her father, the grandson of a Norwegian immigrant who made a hard living in the red-barn country of southern Minnesota, where farmers learned that the longevity of their fields hinged on taking care of them—and taking care of the surrounding community as well. Now that land ownership, as Trom Eayrs notes, has been unlinked from the bonds of family, some good has resulted, “giving women access to land ownership and property rights, allowing racial and ethnic minorities to become landowners, and creating more avenues for upward social and economic mobility.” Yet, she adds, it has also opened the door for corporate ownership, either outright or via leasing farms whose owners become employees. In this regard, she observes, a leased farm just a mile from her family farm in Dodge County earned what on paper appeared to be a sizable source of income, but once expenses were deducted, the net monthly profit was only $41. Those “razor-thin margins” explain why growers use the cheapest possible immigrant labor, cram as much livestock into “concentrated animal feeding operations” as possible, and take no care of the land; the result is meat laced with antibiotics, polluted rivers, and a depopulated countryside. All this will continue, Trom Eayrs concludes, until the federal government stops subsidizing Big Ag and abetting “corporate lawlessness.” A smart, militant update to Wes Jackson’s and Wendell Berry’s writings on smallholder farming, her book demands immediate reforms.

An indignant, righteously wrathful defense of the family farm in the face of corporate voracity.

Kirkus Reviews